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Jeremy Irons was in Los Angeles, CA and in New York City, to promote his film RACE, in which he plays Avery Brundage. The film is the story of Jesse Owens’ quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history, which thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics. The film is directed by Stephen Hopkins and stars Stephan James, Jason Sudeikis, William Hurt, Carice van Houten and Jeremy Irons.

Focus Features has officially acquired domestic rights to the Jesse Owens biopic “Race,” with Jason Sudeikis and Jeremy Irons joining the cast.

Stephan James will play Owens with Stephen Hopkins directing the pic.

The pic is based on the true story of Owens, the legendary sports superstar whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics — where he faces off against Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.

Sudeikis will star as Owens’ obsessive coach and mentor Larry Snyder, who, after his own prestigious track career, became a coach at Ohio State University. Irons will play Avery Brundage, the head of the American Olympic committee who fought to have the 1936 Olympics take place in Berlin.

“Race” is written by Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel. The movie is produced by Jean Charles Lévy for Forecast Pictures, Luc Dayan for ID+, Kate Garwood and Stephen Hopkins for Totally Commercial Films, Louis-Philippe Rochon and Dominique Séguin for Canada’s Solofilms, and Karsten Brünig and Thierry Potok for Germany’s Trinity Race.

The daughter of Olympic athlete Jesse Owens, Marlene Owens Rankin, was at the Berlin Olympic Stadium on Thursday to attend the international sales launch of “Race,” the biopic about her father. Variety spoke to her and Stephen Hopkins, the director of the film, whose cast Jeremy Irons and Geoffrey Rush have just joined.

Owens Rankin, sitting yards from the spot where Adolf Hitler watched the 1936 Olympics in which Owens won four gold medals, said the film can deliver an uplifting message to young moviegoers.

The message “is about the human spirit — about its endurance and vulnerability — but also the success you can achieve when you are motivated, and persevere in the face of adversity,” she said. “So, hopefully, kids who are underachieving and who lack hope will be motivated by his life and successes in spite of all he went through.”

The film, which was being introduced to buyers for the first time in Berlin by its sales agent Mister Smith Entertainment, tracks Owens’ progress leading up to the 1936 Games, contending with racism in the U.S. and Germany before his eventual triumph. Up-and-coming British thesp John Boyega plays Owens, as previously announced in Variety.

Mister Smith’s David Garrett told buyers gathered at the stadium that they were in advanced negotiations with Carice Van Houten to play Leni Riefenstahl.

He announced that Al Munteanu’s SquareOne Entertainment, the German distributor and an exec producer, and Canadian distrib eOne have boarded the project. Production will start May 24, and with the pic to lense in Berlin and Montreal.

“It will feel like a contemporary story,” Hopkins said. “It is about a kid from the wrong side of the tracks fighting his way to the forefront to represent his country. It should be something where people go, ‘I can’t believe this ever happened.’

“My dream is to present a real hero,” he added. “Someone who does it because of his need to better himself and to be dignified, but not in a stuffy way.”

Garrett said he likes to think of the project as “Chariots of Fire” on acid.

“It is an unbelievable story that if you had written it as fiction people would have gone, ‘Hmm, nah. That’s too amazing to be true,’ ” Garrett said. “It has so many stratas, whether it is the issues of prejudice and segregation, and then the hypocrisy of it all, and how people are prepared to compromise their views. It’s about one man breaking down so many people’s prejudices.”

Munteanu said, “It was supposed to be the Nazi Olympics, and he upstaged it entirely. It is a story about complete and utter dedication at a time when everything was against him.”